Rise and shine
The buttery golden light of dawn streamed in through the open curtain. It danced across Elemiel’s eyelids with all the subtle insistence of a nosy neighbor tapping at the door.
The elf groaned and shifted among the satin sheets of her bed, trying to escape the pull of wakefulness, but the sunlight appeared to be hells-bent on dragging her out of slumber.
“Eugh.”
Elemiel was many things, but a morning person she was not.
“Gods damn it,” she grumbled into her pillow, the recollection of a pleasant dream already fading from her mind like dew evaporating from the leaves of a glade in summer. Something about being sandwiched between two clean-limbed young men, sighing and squirming while tangled among the sheets and their bodies?
She cracked one eyelid open, and saw one such clean-limbed young man sleeping next to her. She turned over and aha, yes, there was the other one.
Right. So it had been less a dream than a memory, really.
Elemiel briefly contemplated pulling a pillow over her head and seeking slumber again, but she knew herself well enough to understand that would be an exercise in futility.
“May as well get up,” she mumbled, voice thick with the dregs of sleep.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and when her feet touched the carpet, she dug her toes into the thick pile. The carpet had been enchanted to remain warm even on a chilly winter’s morning, which, judging from the rime of frost patterning the glass of the windows, this very much was. The carpet had cost Elemiel a pretty penny and a bit of flirting with the Sunlander merchant selling it, but money and charm were two things that the elf had in abundance.
The elven woman got to her feet and padded towards the doors to her bedroom. She passed by a sheer robe draped over the back of a velvet-upholstered chair without a second thought, preferring to remain in her sumptuous nudity. The two men still slumbering in her bed had explored the most intimate places of her body last night with touch and sight and taste, so there wasn’t really any use in being shy at this point, was there?
Besides, Elemiel was an elf, and despite living in the lands of Divony for a goodly long while, she still couldn’t quite get the hang of the whole ‘modesty’ thing that humankind seemed to put such stock in.
She pushed open the doors and stepped into her boudoir, where she found breakfast already laid out by some considerate maid. Her servants were well accustomed to her proclivities, and knew that Elemiel was usually quite ravenous after a night spent ‘entertaining’ guests.
Elemiel rifled through the contents of the breakfast tray, pouring herself a cup of steaming coffee from a silver pot and picking up a flaky pastry slathered in butter and jam.
The elf knew that some Divonian noblewomen preferred to only drink tea and smoke a cigarette when breaking their fasts, all in the name of preserving their girlish figures. Lucky for Elemiel, she was neither truly Divonian, nor a noble. Besides, she’d always found it far more enjoyable to be womanly, rather than girlish.
She munched and sipped while she browsed the broadsheets provided for her to read, catching up on the latest gossip and, more importantly, any news that might be relevant to running the several companies she’d inherited from her late husband. Erik had been an adept businessman, and although she’d met him when she’d still been an adventuring minstrel, Elemiel proved to be a quick study under his tutelage.
Dragonskull raiders are harassing caravans to the south, which will probably drive up the price of Southlander spices, she mused, and pestblight has infected the Daemorgrath barley warehouses in the docks. Probably a good idea to hold onto that shipment of beer for a little longer, then sell it when the demand goes through the roof.
Elemiel yawned, bored with doing work so early in the morning. The elven woman tossed aside the newspapers, then noticed a little cream-colored note on the shining platter of the tray. She unfolded it eagerly with her long, graceful fingers.
Meet me in the Watching Room when you’ve had your fill of both breakfast and those two strapping members of the Leatherworkers Guild lying in your bed. I found out that information you were after.
-Talina
P.S. I don’t ask for much, but can you PLEASE try and take the screaming and moaning down a notch? This is an obscenely big house, but I still can’t find a bedroom where your damn cat-yowls won’t reach when you’re really getting into it.
“Excellent,” Elemiel murmured, and a grin teased the lovely bow of the elf’s lips into a curve.
She dropped the note back on the tray, then rose and crossed back into her bedroom. As diverting as her handsome guests had been last night, she had a meeting with Talina and things to attend to. It was time for the boys to go.
Elemiel stood in the doorway and cleared her throat a few times. When that didn’t work, she rolled her eyes and clapped her hands together sharply.
“Boys!” she said loudly, and was rewarded by the sight of the two comely lads blinking the sleep from their eyes and blearily sitting up in the bed.
“It’s been a load of fun- several loads actually, if I remember correctly- but it’s time you got up and were on your way.”
They stared at her like a pair of starving basilisks looking at a wounded ibaux, all but drooling at the sight of her voluptuous nakedness. Being obedient lads, Elemiel saw that indeed parts of them began to rise, although not in the way she’d meant when she’d instructed them to ‘get up.’ A familiar, luxuriant warmth kindled between Elemiel’s thighs, but she suppressed it with an effort.
“That’s very flattering, but I mean it. I’ve got things to do, and I’m sure you’ve got… leather to work or something. Feel free to stop by the kitchens on your way out, and my cooks will fix you a plate.”
“Yes mistress,” they intoned sullenly, then began to dress.
Mistress? What on earth had she done to them last night?
Perhaps she should’ve had a little less Synstrian wine. A paddle and a pair of leather cuffs caught her eye lying among the tangle of sheets, and Elemiel smiled at the sudden recollection. She’d picked up leather workers for a specific reason, after all.
With a few desperate entreaties that she call upon them whenever she felt the need arise, the two men finally left with a last, longing look at the lushness of her shameless elfin dishabille. Elemiel deigned to throw on her robe, figuring that as amusing as it would be to show up to the Watching Room naked, Talina would probably just be irritated.
As Elemiel belted her robe and cinched the knot, she contemplated the events of the night before. The two men had been attractive and diverting, if a little inexperienced, and had made for an extremely pleasant way to pass the evening.
They’d satisfied her well enough, although she’d had to coax them past a few patches of embarrassment. When two men shared a woman in a carnal embrace, it was inevitable that certain things would rub together unexpectedly.
‘Friendly fire’, as she believed the soldiers called it, was also a distinct possibility, as the young men had discovered.
Reflected in the mirror of her vanity, Elemiel’s grin was wolfish. She ran a finger across the heart-shaped beauty mark on her left cheek, then set about the task of arranging the long, silken tresses of her dark, purple-streaked hair, taking it from ‘just-got-out-of-bed-after-a-long-night-of-sex’ to ‘still-had-a-long-night-of-sex-but-hey-at-least-I-ran-a-brush-through-it’.
Indeed, the leather workers had been entertaining, but as Elemiel worried her kraken-bone brush at a particularly stubborn knot, she was forced to admit that the entertainment had mostly been a distraction. As much as it irked her, she suspected that her treacherous, overactive libido had chosen the two attractive (if slightly foolish) men as a stand-in for another.
Asper.
Even with the two of them working in concert, the leather workers hadn’t been able to set her blood aflame like Asper DeNallare did. He was infuriating and irreverent, arrogant and self-assured. They’d met when he had technically broken into her house to crash a party she was hosting, earlier that week.
The tines of her brush worked through the knot in her black-and-violet hair. Elemiel rolled her eyes and scolded herself, attempting to derail that particular train of thought. She was mooning over some infuriating man like an elfmaid with a crush on an orc.
Idiot. She wasn’t certain if she meant herself, or Asper.
Asper did have certain redeeming qualities, she was forced to admit. He was confident, and exciting, and clever, in a way she hadn’t found in a man since Erik had died. But there were plenty of fish in the Western Sea, and Elemiel knew she could have her pick of them. Men and women were practically banging down her door to- well, bang down her door- and there was no reason to get all worked up about one man with granite-grey eyes and a stupidly charming smile.
Even if said man was annoyingly attractive, with a body toned and sculpted by four years of adventuring in the wilds beyond the Godswall.
And also if said man happened to be a famous knight and the Queen’s cousin, returned to the Yvlynes incognito to uncover a plot put into place by his treacherous friend who’d left him for dead in the wilds.
And he’d crashed her party and fucked her six-ways to Solana’s sacred slit earlier that week.
And he was the most interesting thing to happen to her since Erik had died.
And- Oh my gods, shut up already.
Elemiel put the brush down on her vanity a little harder than was strictly necessary, then set her jaw and headed out to meet Talina.
It’s tonight?!
Elemiel didn’t have to go very far to reach the Watching Room, as it happened to be right down the hall from her bedroom in the north wing of the ancient and noble hôtel that served as Elemiel’s home.
The proximity of the Watching Room was both convenient and worrying; convenient in that if she wanted to use its magic, it was only a few steps away; worrying in that she’d lived in the house for years, first with Erik and then on her own after he passed, and had only learned of the room earlier that week.
Another thing to thank Asper for, she thought sourly. He’d been the one to show it to her, after breaking into her party.
Elemiel pressed the stones of the wall in the correct pattern, and the hidden door swung open. The elf climbed the narrow wooden staircase and pushed through the door at the top, entering the hexagonal chamber of the Watching Room.
The Watching Room was, to put it indelicately, a place to spy on people. Many of the old hôtels in the Sapphire District had them, a remnant of the days when politics in Yvlynes had been more overtly cutthroat. Elemiel had already put the room to good use in her own business dealings, leveraging its magic to deal with some Lanevish merchants who were trying to overcharge her to import their icewine.
The chamber was relatively small, and upon each of its six walls hung a mirror. The mirrors were each taller than Elemiel, but their silvered surfaces didn’t reflect anything. Rather, they acted more like windows, each providing a different view into the rooms inside the mansion.
Talina sat at an antique-looking desk in the middle of the room, idly picking her fingernails with the tip of a dagger. She was a Southlander, with emerald eyes and a long, straight nose. The woman tossed her head, shaking her short-cropped black hair from her eyes, and favored Elemiel with a smirk.
“Took you long enough,” she said as Elemiel approached. “Did you have another go at those two sweet idiots you picked up last night?”
Elemiel perched on the edge of the desk and raised an eyebrow. “A proper lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” she said archly.
Talina snorted. “I’m not talking about kissing them.”
At that, the elf threw her head back and laughed. Talina gave her a wide, toothy grin.
“Anyway,” Elemiel continued when her mirth had subsided, “sadly no. I figured breakfast was more important, not to mention the note you left for me. You’ve got a lead?”
“Right,” Talina said, excitement sparkling in her bright green eyes. “This is kind of like old times, isn’t it?”
Years ago, before Elemiel had fallen in love with Erik and long before his death, she and Talina had been bandmates, members in good standing of the Adventurer’s Guild. Their adventuring party, the Golden Bower, had toured the lands of southeastern Divony in search of fame, fortune and adventure.
When they couldn’t find any fortune (which was rather more often than not), Elemiel would break out her lute, strum a tune, and sing for their suppers. It had been a hard, wild life, quite unlike the world of politics and business Elemiel inhabited now, but not without its allure.
After Erik had died, Elemiel had come to rely upon Talina. The olive-skinned Southlander was remarkably handy in a fight, whether that fight happened to be against bandits on the Queensroad, or a different sort of robber in the boardrooms of Yvlyen’s merchant guilds.
“So,” Talina went on, “I reached out to a few old friends, pulled some strings, and waved around a few coins. The end result was a juicy bit of information.”
Here, she rubbed her hands together, unable to contain her excitement. “Would it interest you to know that somehow, that old crook Sharky Houndstooth got himself an invitation to the fête at the Divonian Museum of Natural and Unnatural History?”
“It would indeed.”
“And guess who else is going to be there?” Talina asked. She continued, not waiting for a reply. “That’s right. Duke Nigel Ladsbury Ditherington, Divony’s most eligible bachelor.”
Elemiel pursed her lips, considering the information. She was pretty sure that Duke Ditherington was only considered Divony’s most eligible bachelor by those women who hadn’t had the misfortune to spend five minutes in a room with him, but that was beside the point.
The gala at the museum was well beyond the circles that Sharky Houndstooth moved in, which were usually more akin to swirling around the various drains of the Yvlyenian sewer system. Criminals like him didn’t rate invitations to fancy fundraisers, unless Sharky had really come up in life since the last time Elemiel had dealt with the slippery gnome fixer. She very much doubted that to be the case.
Elemiel would’ve been content to never treat with the likes of Sharky Houndstooth again, except she and Asper had witnessed a clandestine meeting between the larcenous gnome and Duke Nigel Ladsbury Ditherington himself through a mirror in the Watching Room.
Asper had explained that whilst exploring an ancient tomb deep in the wilds past the Godswall mountains, Duke Ditherington had betrayed him and left him for dead, apparently in order to steal an artifact of great power he’d found in the tomb. Ditherington had returned to Yvlynes with the artifact and Asper had followed, although he had chosen to remain incognito for now to take advantage of the fact that everyone thought him dead.
Asper swore he didn’t have the first clue about what the artifact was or did, nor why Ditherington wanted it badly enough to betray Asper, but the incognito knight meant to find out.
“He doesn’t know what it is?” Talina had asked skeptically. “Seems awfully convenient.”
Under normal circumstances Elemiel might’ve agreed, but these were not normal circumstances. “This is the Sunstriker we’re talking about, Tal,” she’d said. “If even half the stories are true, he’s too honorable for his own good.”
Whatever Ditherington was up to in the city, it seemed that Sharky Houndstooth was somehow involved. It was thrilling to be involved in a plot with such apparent stakes, and Elemiel was forced to admit the adventurous streak she’d thought long gone was still shot through her soul like a vein of silver through rock.
That night at her party, Elemiel had agreed to help Asper, and she told herself it wasn’t just because of their enthusiastic, sweaty ‘negotiations.’ The memory of his body pressed upon hers was vexingly distracting. It had been several days since she’d allowed the knight to joyously ravage her upon the desk in this very room, but her keen elven nose could still pick out the scent of their lust.
The smell of sex perfumed the scent of the dust and old wood that was the room’s predominant olfactory attribute. Her cheeks grew warm at the recollection, and she felt the pink buds of her nipples stiffen under her silk robe. She thought of the two leather workers with a tinge of regret. It would’ve been good to clear her mind with another round wedged between the young men, but it was too late for that now.
Her mind bent back to the task at hand with some difficulty.
“Oh shit,” Elemiel swore, “that party is tonight, isn’t it?”
She vaguely remembered seeing the Museum’s invitation, one of scores she was sent every day. The presence of the comely, wealthy elf was a boon to any society party, and the nobles of the Sapphire District always made sure to include Elemiel on their guest lists.
Talina nodded. “You got it. So if you want to find out what they’re doing, we’ve got to act quickly.”
“Right,” Elemiel clapped her hands together decisively, then slid off the desk. “I’m going to need a new dress; something I can hide a knife in and still look fabulous.”
“A knife?”
“Well, a stiletto perhaps. I still want to show off as much of this as possible,” she said, her gesture encompassing the landscape of her shapely body.
Talina rolled her eyes. “Sure. And I’m guessing this has nothing to do with Asper?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” Elemiel sniffed primly.
Not quite a palace
Elemiel felt the carriage pull to a halt, and twitched aside the lacy curtains covering the window. The street outside was framed unflatteringly by the early afternoon light. The traditional Yvlyenian blue-slate roof tiles were chipped or missing on most of the buildings nearby, and the few pedestrians on the street either ignored her carriage or threw sullen, jealous glances in its direction.
The trash-strewn avenues were roughly cobbled and full of potholes, and despite the wonderfully engineered undercarriage of her coach, Elemiel’s bottom had taken quite a pounding on the ride over them.
And not in the enjoyable way.
“Ah, the beauty of charming Tin Town,” Elemiel muttered, pinching her nose at the smell wafting out of the sludge-filled gutters.
She’d spent plenty of time in Tin Town back in her adventuring days, but hadn’t had much cause to visit since she’d moved to the Sapphire District.
She gave a grateful nod to Talina as her friend helped her out of the carriage. Talina wore a black doublet which displayed the bulge of her biceps, and the weight of a broad-bladed shortsword hung at her hip. These things, as well as the fierce scowl she’d affixed to her face, all helped dissuade any of the Tin Town residents who were looking at the finely made carriage with covetous eyes.
Elemiel looked back at the carriage and frowned. It was a fine thing, all lacquered black and gold trim. She’d had to take the covered one, as her uncovered coach had been stolen and driven off a bridge a few months ago, but that was an entirely different story. Either way, it wasn’t the ideal vehicle to take into a neighborhood like this, and she knew that both she and the carriage stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs.
Despite her misgivings, this was where Asper had evidently decided to hunker down during his self-imposed stint as an incognito royal. She supposed laying low wasn’t a terrible idea on his part. No one would suspect that Asper DeNallare, the famous knight otherwise known as the Sunstriker, cousin to the Queen herself, would ever be caught dead in a place like this.
Unfortunately for Elemiel, it meant that she had to visit said place to come and get him.
She grumbled to herself as she walked up the stairs to the tenement house where he currently lived, each step precarious in her shiny black heels. A woman wearing a launderer’s outfit passed her in the hallway and gave Elemiel’s outfit an incredulous look, but the elf’s return stare was so foul that the lass averted her eyes and scurried away without asking any questions.
By the time Elemiel knocked on Asper’s door and the man himself pulled it open, she was ready to jam one of her pointed heels into his pretty, storm-grey eyes, DeNallare or not.
“I’m not entirely sure your fine, knightley bottom is worth all of this trouble,” she said in the lilting elven language, favoring him with a sickly sweet smile.
Asper blinked at her, and said with surpassing eloquence, “Huh?”
Much to Elemiel’s delight, he looked completely off-balance at the sight of her, as if someone had just handed him a live, wriggling murk-eel and told him to kiss it. The fact that he was off-kilter only seemed to add to his charm, and Elemiel spent a long heartbeat taking in the sight of him.
Asper wasn’t what you might call classically handsome. His eyes were perhaps a bit too far apart on his face, and his nose and the small scar on one cheek suggested that he’d been in his fair share of scraps.
Despite this, there was something magnetic in his countenance that drew Elemiel in. His lips were full and sensual, at odds with the hard angle of his jaw but somehow in keeping with the roguish sparkle in his granite-grey eyes. His mouth looked as though it was capable of telling very interesting stories, and Elemiel had already experienced firsthand just how talented that tongue of his was.
Asper’s soft brown hair was tousled and slightly damp with sweat, as if she’d interrupted him doing some kind of exercise, and his loose cotton shirt was unlaced at the throat, allowing her a peek at the wiry hair covering his chest. Elemiel ruthlessly suppressed the electric thrill the sight of this sent tingling down her spine.
Blessed Solana above, even sweaty the man smelled amazing.
“I said hello, Asper,” she drawled, switching back to Divonian from elvish, “it’s very nice to see you. What a lovely place you’ve chosen to live.” Sarcasm dripped from her words like lust from a harlot’s flower.
Asper recovered from his shock remarkably quickly, she had to give him that. His lips pressed into a tight line and he put his hands on his hips, obviously not buying a single word of her lie. He looked her up and down, and when his gaze lingered in all the places Elemiel had intended it to, the elf couldn’t help a little flush of satisfaction. She did look completely stunning, after all.
Elemiel was dressed to kill, and she wasn’t aiming for a quick, painless death. The dress she’d picked for tonight’s affair was simple and elegant, spun from a stretchy black crepeworm material and cut to hug her shapely figure as if it had been painted upon her pale skin. The garment sported an off the shoulder neckline with a scandalous dip in the bust, as well as a long slit up the side which exposed a tantalizingly creamy expanse of thigh every time she took a step.
Her hair was piled in an elaborate confection of midnight black and lavender on her head, pinned in place by a long, silver spike. She’d needed somewhere to fit her stiletto after all, and there certainly wasn’t room for it in her dress. Silver earrings dripped from the lobes of her pointed ears, and the sapphire jewel set into the choker about her neck completed the ensemble.
Asper blew out a breath, then seemed to shake himself free of her allure. “I have several questions,” the knight said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway of his room. “But I think the most pressing one is, how in the Nine Pits do you know where I live?”
Elemiel’s eyebrows contracted in the slightest ghost of a frown. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Aren’t you going to answer my question?”
“Oh that’s simple,” the elf said, sweeping past him to enter his room, invitation or not. “I had you followed.”
“You what?” he sputtered.
“As soon as you left my party that night,” Elemiel said, absently tracing a finger across the surface of the room’s single, small windowsill. She frowned judgmentally at the grime on her fingertip. “You know, for a knight of your renown, I really thought you’d be more aware of your surroundings.”
Asper’s eyes narrowed, the grey growing stormy. The sight of that expression sent a delighted shiver through Elemiel’s body, which she masked by stretching and peering skeptically around the room.
Asper sucked in a breath through his teeth and opened his mouth, but whatever he’d been contemplating saying, he managed to bite it back. He changed tactics.
“Fine. Ok. So why are you here, Elemiel?”
Elemiel could have sent a message explaining everything, of course. But where was the fun in that?
“You promised me a date, remember?” she replied. “It just so happens that I’m slightly accelerating the timeline. We’re going out tonight, to the Museum of Natural and Unnatural History.”
“In the Golden Point District? Tonight?” Asper looked nonplussed. “Well, alright. Let me put on my suit. I will say that a bit of advance notice would be appreciated, however, for next time.”
“Next time? Let’s not count our basilisk eggs before they’ve hatched, Sunstroker.”
“Once again, the nickname is ‘Sunstriker,’ and it’s a silly one in any case. Just call me Asper, please.”
“Of course, your highness.”
The knight rubbed his temples, and muttered something under his breath that was likely meant to be private but which Elemiel’s keen, pointed ears picked up anyway.
“Infuriating vixen.”
She preened a little. Gods damn right I am.
“It may interest you to know,” she said as Asper ducked into the small washroom to sponge the sweat from his skin, “that a certain Duke will be in attendance at the museum tonight.”
That got his attention. Asper leaned out of the washroom, cleaning cloth held in one hand. “Ditherington will be there?” he asked.
Asper had removed his shirt, and Elemiel was enjoying the view of his chiseled shoulders. She realized that the knight was looking at her expectantly, and Elemiel wracked her brain for the question she was sure he’d asked.
Oh, right. She collected herself and nodded. “Yes. Ditherington, and that wretched little worm Sharky Houndstooth, to boot. They’re up to something, Asper,” Elemiel said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice, “and we’re going to figure out what it is.”
“Ah. So your ulterior motives for this ‘date’ are laid bare.” Was it her imagination, or did he sound a little disappointed underneath his sarcasm?
“Oh cheer up. Think of it as an opportunity to break into another party, uninvited. You like doing that, don’t you?”
Asper gave her an unamused look, which she ignored.
“What do you think they could be doing at the museum together?” Elemiel asked. “Houndstooth wouldn’t rate an invitation, not without the intercession of someone like Duke Ditherington.”
“They’re working together, that’s for certain,” Asper agreed, “but to what end, I’m not sure.”
“And you’ve got no idea what the artifact was that Ditherington stole from the tomb?”
Asper’s face grew shadowed, and a haunted look entered his eyes. “It wasn’t a… it was a bad place, Elemiel. Whatever he took from it won’t bode well for anyone in this city.”
Elemiel chewed on those ominous words while the knight finished washing, and began to dress. He struggled to tie his cravat, and Elemiel realized he probably had servants back at the Emerald Palace who would do that kind of thing for him. He certainly wasn’t wearing ties and suits out in the field.
The elf woman walked over to Asper and gently pushed his hands away, then began to fold the cloth of his cravat. The action put them in very close proximity, and Elemiel felt the knight’s eyes on her while she focused on tying his necktie.
Their faces were scant inches apart, and this close Elemiel could fill her nostrils with the smell of him; clean sweat, and the hint of some musky perfume or aftershave. Through the thin fabric of her fine dress Elemiel had little trouble feeling the lean hardness of his body, and she casually, almost carelessly leaned in to gently brush her chest against his.
With Asper staring at her like that, Elemiel forgot she was standing in a dingy bathroom in some rented Tin Town apartment. Despite the slightness of the touch, molten sparks seemed to pass between the two of them, the passion-fire finding ready tinder in Elemiel’s flesh. She felt warm, and the sensation of her nipples against the fabric of her dress was suddenly overwhelming. Tinder she might be, but there was certainly nothing dry about the heat which kindled between her legs just then.
Elemiel’s mouth opened, and something like a sigh escaped the lovely bow of her lips. She felt Asper respond, but his hands hovered over her hips as if he was afraid to touch her.
“All done,” she said, and her voice was husky with the wanting of him.
Elemiel found herself disconcerted. She was quite sure that if he put his hands on her, she was going to immediately strip off her very expensive, very nice dress, regardless of the filthy state of the bathroom floor.
Get it together, Elemiel! She hadn’t been this spun up about a guy since… Well, since Erik.
“Asper,” she murmured, her lips dangerously near his. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take this off.” She took his collar between her fingers and slid them down the fabric.
There was desire in his reply, but also a haughty smugness that set Elemiel afire even as it irked her. “Is that right, Elemiel?”
She came back to herself a little. “Yes. Isn’t the objective of this whole incognito affair not to draw attention to yourself?”
The knight blinked, clearly not expecting the detour that the conversation had taken. “What? I mean, of course. But what does that have to do with my suit?”
Her lips twisted into a vexatious smile. “This is a museum gala we’re talking about, Asper. The queen herself has been known to attend these on occasion.”
“What’s your point?” he said crossly, unsure of where she was going with this.
“My point is, dear Sir Asper, that you need to rise to the occasion, and not quite in your current manner.” She resisted the urge to dip her eyes towards the obvious excitement stirring between his legs. “The suit you’ve got is fine for crashing an innocent elf’s soiree, but you’ll need something more if you want to blend in tonight.”
Asper’s brows rose skeptically at the words ‘innocent elf’. “You couldn’t have said something before I got all of this on?” He swept his arm down to indicate his clothing.
“You looked like you were trying so hard. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
The expression on his face was that of a saint upon the pyre. “Well it doesn’t matter,” he finally said. “This is the best I can do for now. I’m afraid I don’t have access to my wardrobe in the Emerald Palace. I’m supposed to be dead, remember?”
Elemiel’s smile only broadened. “Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem. The party isn’t for a few hours yet. There’s plenty of time to go shopping.”
He looked pointedly around the room. “I don’t have access to the royal coffers either, a fact which I’m certain hasn’t escaped your notice.”
Elemiel’s laughter was like a silver ribbon in the air. “How droll, Asper. You don’t need the royal coffers when you’ve got access to me.”
She batted her eyes, and added in elven, “You don’t need access to the royal brothel with me around, either.”
“What was that?” Asper asked, but Elemiel just gave him a look filled with false virtue. She simpered into a little mocking curtsey, and gestured to the door.
“After you, Sunstroker.”
Now that’s a nice suit
“Right here is perfect, thanks Talina.”
Elemiel pulled her head back inside the carriage as Talina guided it off the main thoroughfare, weaving expertly through the heavy traffic of the Iron Ward. They drew up alongside the curb, but before Talina could dismount from the driver’s seat Asper slipped out.
He opened Elemiel’s door and held out an expectant hand, and when she accepted he helped her step from the carriage to the sidewalk.
Talina watched the knight with an appraising look, then caught Elemiel’s eye. “At least he’s not a cad,” her friend said in elven. “I’ll wait for you here,” Talina added, switching back to Divonian for Asper’s benefit.
The elf smiled. “Thanks. We shouldn’t be too long.”
Asper looked between the two women with interest, perhaps intrigued by the fact that Talina spoke elven. He made no comment, but instead turned to the shop the carriage was parked in front of.
“Mithril Maidens?” he asked, reading the sign. “Why are we at an armorer’s?”
Elemiel snorted in amusement, imagining him decked out in one of the chainmail bikinis that the Mithril Maidens specialized in. “As much as I’d like to see you in one of their outfits, we’re not going to the Maidens’. We’re headed there.”
She pointed at the building next door. A sign swung from above the lintel, upon which a lizard-like monster dressed in a coat and tophat had been painted. Below, the words ‘The Preening Cockatrice’ were written in bold lettering.
Elemiel swept into the clothier’s as if she owned the place. The bright-eyed young shopkeeper behind the counter took one look at her pointed ears, and recognition blossomed on their face. Elemiel took the attention in stride- being an elf in the Divonian capital meant she was used to being noticed. The fact that her holdings supplied nearly half the textile shops in the city with material probably didn’t hurt, either.
The shopkeeper set down the cloth scissors they’d been holding and hurried forward.
“I’m honored for your custom, Miss Elemiel,” they said, folding into an elegant bow that would’ve done a courtier proud. “How may I be of service today?”
Elemiel immediately got to work. With the shopkeeper’s help, she selected several different outfits in short order, holding each one up to Asper and eyeing it critically. Asper bore the attention with stoic silence, a martyred look of resignation on his face.
The bell on the front door rang, indicating the presence of several new customers. The young shopkeeper looked at Elemiel apologetically, a question in their eyes.
“Go on,” Elemiel said kindly, waving her hand. “By the looks of what they’re wearing, they need your help more than we do.”
The shopkeeper bowed gratefully. “Please feel free to try on anything that strikes your fancy,” they said, before rushing off to assist the newcomers. Elemiel and Asper were left alone near the fitting rooms.
“And does anything strike your fancy, Asper?” Elemiel asked.
Without waiting for him to reply she leaned forward, using the pretext of examining a finely cut coat of charcoal grey silk. She angled her body towards Asper, and the position managed to put the deep valley of her cleavage center stage. Although it was probably redundant, she gave her breasts a subtle little squeeze with her upper arms. The bounty of her flesh bulged tantalizingly.
“What a lovely rack, sir knight. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Eh?” he replied, sounding properly distracted.
“The clothes. I’m talking about the rack of clothes.”
Asper made a strangled noise, and Elemiel hid her grin by reaching for another suit. Tormenting the knight was just as fun as looking at him.
“Here,” she said, straightening, “what about this one?”
Asper blew out a breath. “No. I’m not a doll for you to dress, you exasperating creature,” he said. “Besides, that material doesn’t go with my coloring, and the fit looks to be too tight around the shoulders. I’ll look better in something like… ah, there.”
The knight selected a suit of brilliant navy blue with notched lapels. He eyed the cut critically, then nodded.
“Much better,” he declared, and Elemiel was forced to admit he was right. The blue of the fabric brought out the sapphire flecks in his storm-grey eyes. She supposed he’d learned a thing or two about fashion, dressing for court in the palace.
A man as comfortable in fine clothing as a suit of armor. Asper DeNallare appeared to possess quite a reserve of surprises.
The knight stepped into a fitting room, and the elf browsed for a few minutes until Asper emerged. When he twitched the curtain aside, Elemiel’s breath caught in her throat.
“How does this strike your fancy?” he said, adjusting the cuffs of the jacket around his wrist with a cocky grin.
“You look…,” she started, then tried again. “Well. At least you clean up nicely.”
She tried to maintain an air of haughty indifference, and was aware she was failing spectacularly. He grinned as if he could read her thoughts, and swept his fingers through his tousled hair.
He looked a damn sight more than good, and based on the twinkle in his eyes, Asper knew it. Elemiel was surprised to feel a flush spread on her upper chest, and somewhat less surprised by the sensation of warm, throbbing desire pulsing in the core of her womanhood.
Asper kept looking at her with that self-satisfied smile plastered on his face. Determined to regain the upper hand and struck by sudden inspiration, the elf threw a glance over her shoulder. The shopkeeper was still helping the other customers, none of whom were paying any attention to Elemiel or Asper.
Perfect.
She reached out and snagged a pair of silver cufflinks from a display on a nearby countertop, then grabbed Asper by the hand and pulled him into a fitting stall.
“Come on,” she said, “try these on.”
“I hardly think I need to be in a fitting room to do that,” Asper protested, but he stopped talking when Elemiel yanked the curtain shut behind the two of them. He saw the wicked twinkle in her eyes, the amethyst purple of her irises streaked with deep lilac.
“What exactly are you- mmmph,” Asper’s question was silenced by Elemiel’s kiss.
She pressed herself against him, her hands sliding under his jacket to clutch at his hips even while her mouth hungrily sought him out. Asper’s lips were warm and soft. When Elemiel felt his strong tongue sweep into her mouth and entwine with hers, she couldn’t help the happy moan she sighed against his lips. The stubble of his chin tickled her face, and she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, drinking in the smell of him.
Elemiel opened her eyes again when she felt his hand cradle the back of her head. She didn’t resist when the taller man titled her back, angling her head so that he could press his fierce kiss deeper into her mouth. She closed her eyes again as their tongues swirled together, and she felt the urgent hunger radiating from him like the heat from a red-hot coal.
He tasted good, Solana be praised, so damnably good.
The voluptuous elf floated on warm, liquid bliss until she felt his hot, eager hands slide from her neck down to her breasts. She was sorely tempted to let him just tear the garment off of her, but Elemiel had spent a lot of time getting her look just right for tonight, and whatever they did in this fitting room, she and the knight would still need to go to a very fancy party soon with dangerous people.
“No,” she said, and immediately Asper’s hands ceased their quest for her flesh. He opened his eyes and looked down at her, a question on his face.
Heart hammering in her chest and breathing hard, Elemiel tried to come up with something clever to say, but instead she just blurted the first words that popped into her mind.
“I want to gag on your cock.”
“Sweet gods above,” Asper said.
I guess that did the trick. Elemiel figured that sometimes, being clever was overrated.
The elven woman felt the swollen, pulsing hardness press against her leg from beneath Asper’s suit pants. Neither willing nor able to resist any longer, Elemiel reached down and placed her hand against it. She felt the hot steel of his cock through his trousers, and rubbed her palm with maddening slowness up and down its lovely length.
When Elemiel slid to her knees she kept her lavender eyes fixed upon Asper’s grey ones, which had turned the color of a storm-wracked sea. Her hands worked deftly at his buckle, and in short order his belt came free and she was tugging down his pants.
Asper’s cock was just as lovely as she remembered from that night in the Watching Room; hard and red and curved just so. The mushroom flare of its crown gleamed with a smear of precum, and a bead of the same welled at the tip, yet more evidence of the strength of the knight’s desire.
The sight of the penis, jutting hard and proud from between Asper’s legs, was a desperately arousing spectacle. Elemiel licked her lips and felt a twang of deep, needy lust thrum through the very core of her body.
“That,” she murmured in elven, transfixed by the sight of the man’s penis, “is a lovely dick.”
Asper groaned when Elemiel used the tip of her thumb and forefinger to gently circle his glans. His cock twitched, almost seeming to shiver at her touch, and Elemiel spread the wet seepage leaking from his cockslit around.
She focused on his frenulum, her thumb rubbing against the sensitive skin. Elemiel knew from experience that the light touch and gentle pressure applied there just so was pure, sweet torment for a man. Based on Asper’s low whine, the knight was no different.
As much as Elemiel enjoyed the animal sounds of the man’s desperation, she longed for the taste of his root. She pressed a wet kiss to the top of his dick, tongue darting out to sample him. She found his taste to be sweet and heady, as if he’d been eating nothing but fruit and honey all week. Her spit mingled with the precum glistening on the tip of his straining cock, and his whole shaft gave another desperate twitch.
Asper lifted his eyes to the ceiling and growled. “You are absolutely diabolical, Elemiel. Are you an elf, or a succubus?”
Elemiel replied with a grin that was certainly fit for a succubus. She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Don’t say a word. Someone might hear, and besides, your only job right now is to lean back and cum as hard as you possibly can in my mouth.”
“Oh gods,” Asper moaned, bracing himself against the back wall of the fitting booth.
Elemiel tore her gaze from the mouthwatering sight of his cock to look Asper dead in the eye. She knew men liked plenty of eye contact when a woman gave them head, but more importantly, Elemiel wanted to watch the expression on his face when she finally took him into her mouth.
Eyes locked, she looked up at him and said, “You look even better when I’m down on my knees,” then she parted her lips and swallowed his cockhead.
“Fuuuck,” he hissed.
Elemiel held the tip of him in her mouth and placed her tongue against its underside. She pulled down against the root of his penis so that the skin was tight and shining, and warmed the heft of his bollocks with the heat of her palm. Her lips slid down his length no further than the edge of his crown, and she batted her eyes up at him with an expression of such incongruent innocence that she felt Asper’s balls tighten in her hand.
She pulled him out of her mouth, careful to manage the mess of spit and precum. Normally she’d be willing to get quite a bit messier, but Elemiel had her makeup to think of.
“Don’t cum yet,” she ordered. “I don’t want to stop blowing you.”
He reached for her then, but she warded away his questing fingers with a single look. “Uh-uh. Mind the hair. It took hours to get right.”
She tucked a few loose strands of purple-tinged black behind her ear, and caught sight of herself in the fitting room mirror. As she knelt, Elemiel’s dress had ridden up to her waist, exposing the plush roundness of her ass. Asper’s cock was twitching above her face, and her nipples were clearly visible through the thin fabric of her gown. She looked like a total harlot kneeling there in the fitting room of a clothing store- albeit a very well dressed harlot.
Solana above, she thought, staring at her reflection, I look good. At that moment her nipples felt harder than Asper’s cock, which was saying something.
“Elemiel, you are so lovely.” Asper’s voice was strained and his eyes were like pools of molten silver as he looked down at her.
For some reason, Elemiel felt the sudden and ridiculous urge to show off.
My makeup can get a little messy, she thought, as long as it’s within reason.
She reached out and took one of Asper’s hands, noting the calluses on the palm which indicated many long hours in the training yard holding a sword. She brought his fingers to her mouth and took one between her lips, sucking lasciviously upon it. Staring up at him, Elemiel made a wanton display of herself while she stroked him, pumping her fist slowly but mercilessly up and down his shaft even as she sucked on his fingers.
If she’d been a painter, she would’ve loved to have captured the look on Asper’s face. He has no idea what he’s in for. Past lovers had called her mouth both a vortex and a treasure, and Asper was about to find out both were correct.
“I want to feel your dick hit the back of my throat,” she purred, and began to suckle his length once more.
She started slowly, beginning with a long, languid series of slurps at his tip before taking him deeper. Elemiel flattened her tongue and relaxed, easing his girth past her lips with a filthy, wet noise. His wasn’t the largest prick she had ever swallowed, but it most certainly was not the smallest, either.
It wasn’t long before Elemiel felt the tip of the knight’s cock prodding the back of her throat. Her eyes watered and a thin trickle of tears ran down her cheek past her heart-shaped beauty mark, but at that moment, with Elemiel’s nose and mouth and throat so full of Asper, the last thought she had was for her mascara.
Above her, Asper sounded like a leashed animal. She could feel his thighs trembling with the effort to hold back from thrusting forward and taking her mouth. Right then Elemiel hoped he would. She wanted him to grip her by the hair, coiffure be damned. She longed for him to tilt her head back and force himself deep inside of her, to feel his hands on her breasts and the weight of his bollocks resting on her chin as he rutted her mouth.
The idea of allowing him to ruin her was deeply thrilling. Alas, it appeared that the knight had reserves of self control.
Elemiel felt his cock throb deep in her throat and the heat pooled in her groin. Her dress had already ridden up to her waist, so it was a simple matter to slide a finger into the clutching, sodden warmth of her cunt.
The elf pressed the heel of her palm into her clit as she worked her fingers within herself, grinding starbursts of heat and ecstasy from the little pearl that formed the center of her pleasure. She groaned as she sucked and rubbed, desperate to sate her desire as well as Asper’s, to ease the throbbing hunger of her body as she satisfied him.
There in the dressing room, with the sound of customers chatting with the shopkeeper outside, Elemiel hummed while she swallowed the sword of her erstwhile knight down to the hilt, the vibration of her purring adding to the pleasurable sensation she was gifting him with.
She stared up at him, eyes violet fire, and fingered herself until she felt the wet, spreading heat of an orgasm. Elemiel’s moan of ecstasy was muffled by the cock in her mouth, but she didn’t break eye-contact as her throat convulsed with unscreamed wails.
Asper looked at her in wondering disbelief, and Elemiel grinned wildly around his dick as she came on her fingers. She might be on her knees in a fitting room before him, but there was nothing submissive about this blowjob. She wanted his cock and what would come out of it, and she was accustomed to getting what she wanted.
Cum, she told him with a look. I want you to give me every last drop of it.
When she felt Asper’s penis pulse against her tongue, hot and rigid and straining, she knew he had gotten the message. The knight gasped, once, twice, and balled his hands into fists. Suddenly, the elf’s mouth was filled with the wet heat of him, and hot seed spurted against the back of her throat. He came in a river of spunk, but Elemiel had mastered the art of navigating this particular kind of deluge.
When the bulk of his climax had been spent, Elemiel slid him carefully out of her throat and pursed her lips, settling the tip of his cock into her mouth so that she could nurse out the last dregs of his sweet, thick semen. When he could give her no more and began to shy away, the pleasure changing almost to pain with intensity, Elemiel kissed a lazy line down the underside of his penis, ending with a sweet smooch for each of his balls.
Having drunk her fill of his essence, Elemiel rose to her feet with the poise and grace of her kind. Asper’s eyes widened, and he brushed a thumb against her cheek to wipe away the moisture of her tears. He gently cupped her jaw, bringing her cum-stained lips close to his.
“Oh Elemiel, did I hurt you?” His concern was palpable, but Elemiel snorted.
“Hardly. It’s amazing how much power a girl has while she’s on her knees.”
Belly full, cunt sated by her fingers but still somehow hungry for the feeling of his heated flesh to be sheathed inside of hers, it was only the timely (or perhaps untimely) arrival of the shopkeeper that forestalled any further intimacy between the elf and the knight.
“Oh!” the shopkeeper exclaimed. He quickly slid the curtain shut, clearing his throat in embarrassment. Asper’s cheeks were bright red, which Elemiel found endlessly amusing.
Ah, humans and their little hangups.
“A thousand apologies,” the shopkeeper said hurriedly, sounding mortified. “It’s been a while, and I thought you had both left. By all the gods of the Pantheon, I am so, so sorry.”
Elemiel pulled down her dress reluctantly, fixed her eyeshadow as best she could in the fitting room mirror, and pulled the curtain aside. She didn’t bother to check if Asper had tucked away his cock back inside the fine blue pants of the suit.
“Whatever for?” she asked breezily. “The service here has been excellent, and I’m truly satisfied. No, that’s not quite the word- perhaps ‘satiated’ would be more appropriate? What do you think, Asper?”
“I think,” Asper said slowly, “that we’ll take the suit. But it’s going on her tab.”
Multilinguist
It stormed during their carriage ride to the museum.
Although winter in Yvlynes usually meant snow, the weather had grown too warm for the water to freeze, and a chilly rain had fallen from the slate-grey sky instead. Puddles of rainwater gathered on the flagstone drive of the Museum of Natural and Unnatural history like dark mirrors, reflecting the glowstone lamps that illuminated the building’s stately edifice.
Talina guided their carriage into the line of vehicles headed for the elegant columns of the museum’s portico, and Elemiel watched as the Yvlenian elite disgorged from their coaches. Decked out in their best, the nobles and aristocrats looked to Elemiel like gemstones, a line of jewels filing into the ornate front doors of the museum’s grand entrance.
She glanced over at Asper. The knight sat quietly, but his eyes were fixed upon her instead of the crowd outside. He looked distressingly handsome in his blue suit, and the taste of him lingering on Elemiel’s lips only made her craving for the feeling of his flesh on hers that much more intense.
Butterflies did a little dance in her belly, although whether it was from the idea of straddling Asper in the carriage while they waited their turn to enter, or the promise of excitement and adventure inside the museum, Elemiel wasn’t sure.
“This is going to be very fun,” she murmured to herself in elven. Louder and in Divonian, she addressed Asper. “Now would be a good time to put on the ring.”
“Right,” he replied.
He accepted the little golden band she handed to him and slipped it onto his finger. There was a brief sparkle of magic, and Elemiel watched Asper’s features change.
The difference was subtle; a lengthening of the nose, a small change to the heft of his jaw and the planes of his cheeks. His quartz-grey eyes remained the same, and the disguise provided by the glamor of the magical ring wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny from someone who knew Asper well, but Elemiel figured it would be enough to fool a casual observer.
Asper was one of the Queen’s cousins, after all, and if he wanted to preserve the advantage that the illusion that his falsely-reported death afforded him, he couldn’t very well walk into a high-society party without some sort of a disguise.
“Handy, this,” he said, twisting the golden band on his finger.
“Indeed,” the elf replied. She tried to hide her disappointment in the change to Asper’s features. Elemiel rather liked the way he usually looked. “Back in our adventuring days, Talina and I used it to great effect. We found it in a dungeon filled with scathers. Remind me to tell you the story sometime, it’s quite amusing.”
“Good luck,” Talina said when she pulled the coach to a halt underneath the museum’s covered portico. “I’ll be in the carriage-yard if you need me.”
To Elemiel she said in elven, “have fun, and try not to make a mess. I can smell his cum on your breath.”
“I can’t promise you that,” Elemiel grinned.
Arm in arm, Elemiel and Asper walked through the ornately carved doors of the museum’s entrance. Elemiel attracted a few curious glances, because, well, of course she did, but the only looks thrown Asper’s way were of mild-to-overt jealousy, not recognition. Excellent.
It was all going quite well, until they ran into the bouncer.
“Halt, please. May I see your invitations?”
The speaker was an eight-foot tall slab of muscle. Elemiel’s eyes travelled up the length and breadth of him, taking in the blue-and-silver sorcerer’s robes and the glittering charms which hung draped from his ivory-white horns.
A minotaur. And what was more, a minotaur mage.
“Most certainly,” Elemiel replied with easy charm. She handed over her invitation, noting the way that the minotaur’s bull-like nostrils flared as he read the note.
“Be welcome Madame Elemiel,” said the minotaur, handing the cream and gold parchment back to the elf. She smiled and moved to step past, but the minotaur shook his massive head, the charms on his horns tinkling.
“I’m afraid your guest can’t pass.”
“The invitation said I could bring a plus one.”
She let a note of irritation creep into her voice, although internally she was wracking her brain for what could possibly be the problem. Had Asper been recognized? Was the minotaur somehow working for Ditherington, and that slimeball Sharky Houndstooth?
“Indeed it did,” the minotaur inclined his bovine head respectfully, “but there is no glamor magic allowed inside the museum tonight. We must all come as we are, for security’s sake, and your friend,” he said, pointing at Asper, “is not who he seems.”
The minotaur’s nostrils flared again, as if he could sense the enchantment of the ring that Asper wore.
“Ah,” Elemiel said. She sucked her lips into her mouth and furrowed her brow, as if considering how to broach a delicate subject. The elf took a step closer to the mage, and lowered her voice slightly.
“You see,” she said, “that’s going to be a bit of a problem for my companion. He’s a member of the Adventurer’s Guild, and recently returned from an escapade to the Barrow Hills. While he was plundering the dungeons,” she leaned in further and placed a gentle hand on the minotaur’s forearm, “he had an unfortunate encounter with an acidic slime. The results are… disturbing, and without that ring, I’m afraid the sight of him might distress those of your guests with a more delicate constitution. Why, the first time I saw the poor man, I almost lost my breakfast.”
“Hmm,” the minotaur grumbled, his eyes narrowing. “That is… unfortunate.”
Elemiel decided to press the advantage. She leaned in further, brushing the charms of her chest against the minotaurs arm and affecting a stage whisper. “It did a real number on his face, and the glamor ring helps with that. But the true horror is that the slime dripped directly into his lap. Apparently his, ah, ‘candle’- to put it delicately- melted like hot wax.”
The big minotaur shivered. “My condolences, sir,” he said, looking at Asper with a mixture of revulsion and pity. “How terrible for you. It just… melted? Like hot wax?”
“Yes,” Asper grated, his eye twitching, “right down to the wick.”
“Minos’s horns,” the minotaur breathed. “Go ahead and keep the ring on.”
When they were past the mage, Elemiel let out the laugh that she’d been struggling to hold in. “Right down to the wick?” she repeated. “Oh, very good.”
The knight’s brows were beetled into a frown, but she caught the amusement in his eyes. “Hilarious, Elemiel.”
“Aren’t I?”
The elf snagged a flute of champagne from a passing servant and led Asper into the press of well-heeled people in the grand hall. She navigated the crowd like a fish swimming through a river current, nodding to those who waved at her and exchanging a few words with those she knew.
She took Asper through the cream of Divonian society, slipping past awkward questions and avoiding drawn out conversations with the adroitness of an experienced fencer, although instead of a rapier she used the flutter of her long lashes, a light touch, an easy laugh, and a silver tongue.
In what seemed like no time at all, they’d traversed the entirety of the grand hall and the partygoers who filled it.
“I didn’t see any sign of our quarry,” she said, tossing back the last of the champagne and setting the glass aside. “What about you?”
“Good gods,” Asper replied, looking at the elf with eyebrows raised. “I barely had time to think, let alone look for Ditherington in that press. Do you know everyone at this party?”
“Do try and keep up, Asper,” Elemiel said with a smirk. “Now come on. We should start our search in the Hall of Fell Beasts to the left of the main staircase, then make our way to the Antiquities Wing and the Hall of Ancient Wonders.”
Without waiting for Asper’s reply, Elemiel headed past the imposing double staircase towards the Hall of Fell Beasts. She put some extra sway in her hips, trusting the sinuous hourglass shape of her figure would be sufficient to drag the knight along.
Asper quickly caught up to her, and gave the elf a curious look. “You sound like you know the museum well,” he said, leaving the question hanging in the air unanswered. She decided to humor him.
“Erik- my late husband, that is- used to bring me here a lot. We enjoyed it.”
They passed through the doors and into the Hall of Fell beasts. The glowstone chandeliers were dimmer here, the lighting turned down to enhance the thrill of standing amidst so many sets of deadly claws, stingers and fangs. They were all long dead and stuffed of course, specimens brought from the farthest reaches of Divony and beyond, but the effect was still quite theatric.
Elemiel walked past a taxidermied owlbear. It was posed in a terrifying position, rearing up on its hindquarters with its beak open in a silent roar. Far above them hung the whorled, spiky shell of a tarrasque, the immense plates of interlocking, bony armor taking up the entirety of the Hall’s vaulted ceiling.
“Ah yes,” said Asper, following Elemiel past some kind of spiny, ant-like creature portrayed as erupting from a patch of sandy earth. “My condolences. I’ve heard he was a good man.”
For a change, Asper’s voice was low and respectful. Elemiel shot him a surreptitious glance, but he appeared to be absorbed in the thoughtful contemplation of a stuffed yeti.
Hm, she mused, if he knows about Erik, he’s been doing a bit of research on me. She wasn’t certain to be annoyed or flattered, so she decided she’d be both.
“He was, and thank you.” She didn’t mind talking about her late husband. The pain was long scarred over, and time had worn the sharp edges from the memory of him so that they no longer cut.
“You’ve never remarried?” Asper continued curiously. “Not to pry, but why not? I’m certain you haven’t wanted for eligible suitors, and when we met, I do believe you declared your intention of chasing down a title.” A delinquent grin spread across his face. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you managed to frighten all the eligible noblemen off?”
Elemiel snorted. “Please. I’ve been holding out for someone who didn’t annoy me.”
She had indeed wanted a title, but perhaps not for the reasons that Asper thought. It was rather difficult to get laws changed in Divony if one didn’t have ‘Duchess,’ or ‘Baroness’ attached to one’s name.
Asper opened his mouth to ask another question, but Elemiel cut him off. She put her hands on her hips and fixed her lavender eyes on him.
“What is this, an inquisition? Less personal questions, more focusing on the mission.”
Elemiel stared down her nose at him, then her face broke into a wicked grin as she spotted something behind the knight.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, pointing, “look at the size of that chimera’s cock! Do you think it just hangs like that all the time, or did they stuff it on purpose?”
After dragging a reluctant Asper along to thoroughly inspect the fourth head of the three-headed creature, Elemiel and the knight left the Hall of Fell Beasts behind and moved to the next room. This hall was far better lit, and its whitewashed walls were hung with portraits.
A few party guests, mostly pairs or trios, moved among the canvasses. They sipped wine and occasionally spoke in low voices, but mostly seemed to be transfixed by the art. When Elemiel looked at a few of the paintings, she could see why.
They mostly depicted lovely women in various states of undress, and often, the subjects were doing a great deal more than getting naked. Each work of art had been rendered with such loving, soft detail that Elemiel felt as if she might reach out and cup the sweet curve of a breast, or place her lips against a painting and feel not impasto and canvas, but the press of a warm mouth.
“Wow,” Asper said, “these are… something else.” He was staring at an image of a redhead woman bent over and being taken from behind by a satyr-like creature, both figures lost in the throes of passion.
“We really should be looking for Ditherington and his cronies,” Elemiel said, moving to stand by Asper.
“Absolutely agree,” he said, eyes still glued to the painting.
The knight shifted slightly and his shoulder brushed Elemiel’s. Primed by the lasciviousness of painting’s subject matter and the excitement of the evening, the slight contact felt like a lightning bolt sent directly into her veins.
She saw the apple of Asper’s throat move as he swallowed hard, and intuited he was feeling much the same. A warm heat settled in the place somewhere below her stomach at the memory of his cum filling her mouth, and the moaned growls he made while he spilled.
It was only with great difficulty that the two of them managed to tear themselves away from the gallery. Elemiel’s cheeks felt flushed, and Asper kept darting heated glances in her direction when he thought she wasn’t looking.
The subject matter of the next room didn’t help cool the passion building between them.
“Seriously,” Elemiel muttered, staring in disbelief at the sign at the entrance to the room.
“Elven fertility rituals,” Asper read the placard aloud. “Hm. It says here that this exhibit was sponsored by the Queen herself, in conjunction with the elven ambassador Seoid, to foster cross-cultural understanding.” Asper chuckled. “Aunt Annabelle always did enjoy exploring the elven culture.”
Elemiel had heard rumors about the Queen, of course, but to hear it confirmed from the lips of one of her family was another thing entirely.
“Really?” she asked, intrigued, Asper didn’t reply, focused on examining the display.
The exhibit was rather eye-catching, Elemiel had to admit. Upon a circular dias at the center of the room were positioned a dazzling array of elven-made sex toys. There were false cocks of every shape and size, made out of everything from stone to polished, lacquered wood, to the flexible resin of the knobgoblin tree. She spotted jeweled butt-plugs and whips, as well as paddles and manacles lined with soft aurochs fur.
“You’re people don’t mess around when it comes to fertility,” Asper observed.
“Hmph,” sniffed Elemiel, but before she could cook up a suitably witty riposte, Asper had moved over to a plinth underlit by the warm light of glowstones. Draped on the velvet as if it were a necklace, lay a peculiar pair of metallic implements.
“Huh, it says right here that these are nipple clamps,” he pointed to the flowing elven script engraved into the metal of one of the clams. “I can’t quite suss out the maker’s mark, though. They look ancient.”
“Ancient?” Elemiel stuck out her lower lip. “Hardly. I think my grandmother has a pair of these.”
She leaned towards the plinth, intent on seeing if she could discern the maker’s maker for herself, when something tickled at her brain.
“Hold on a second,” she said. “This engraving is in elven.”
Asper clasped his hands behind his back and made a show of squinting at the clamp. “So it is,” he agreed.
Elemiel felt a sense of growing dread warring with the lust in the core of her body.
“Asper. Can you read elven?”
“I was raised in the Emerald Palace, Elemiel. My tutors were very thorough.”
“Wait. Hold on. Can you speak elven too?”
Asper gave his reply in heavily accented, but perfectly understandable elvish. “I’ve picked up a few words here and there.”
Elemiel felt the blood rush to her cheeks. This whole time. He could understand her this whole time. Oh gods. She’d said some… things, hadn’t she? Elemiel’s mind raced, thinking back.
Oh dear. I certainly did say some things.
“Asper!” she squawked, “that’s not fair! Not fair at all!”
He closed the distance between them with a stride, and with his hands on her hips he pulled her to him.
“I’m not interested in fair, Elemiel,” he growled. “I’m interested in you.”
Her heart fluttered, and something decidedly lower in her body gave an urgent, needy throb.
“Next room,” she managed to gasp.
Although most of the partygoers didn’t seem to have made it past the art gallery, a few of them lingered nearby, giggling and pointing at the display of sex toys. Elemiel knew from experience that the next room, the Hall of Gemstones, had several dark corners that might offer a little more privacy.
They managed to keep their hands off one another until they stumbled into the Hall of Gemstones. Elemiel completely ignored the enormous, storied jewels displayed behind their glass cases. She took Asper by the hand and pulled him past the infamous Despair Diamond and the glittering, aptly named ‘Mountain of Lights,’ towards a shadowed alcove that was lined with more glass displays.
The alcove was empty, but even if it hadn’t been, Elemiel wouldn’t have cared. She craved release. No, it was more than that. She needed it.
She fumbled with Asper’s shirt, graceless in her desperation, then realized with indignation that he was hesitating. He stood there, looking at her, laying bare each curve and supple swell of her flesh as with his eyes, but his hands didn’t reach out to touch her. Disappointingly, maddeningly, her clothes remained on.
“What the hells are you waiting for?” she snapped.
“I didn’t want to mess up your dress. You look so beautiful, Elemiel.”
Elemiel had dated a poet once, who’d written a sonnet describing her as ‘like a sculpture, the centerpiece of an elegant fountain, carved by a craftsman with a generous hand and an eye for ample curves.’
It fell well short of the molten poetry of longing she saw then in Asper’s eyes.
“Sod the dress,” the elf snarled, and tugged down the off-the-shoulder straps, pulling the slinky garment lower and lower until finally, with a jiggling bounce, she had freed the creamy lushness of her chest.
Asper licked his lips. “Your breasts are very lovely,” he observed.
“How can you possibly tell that from all the way over there?”
She grabbed him by the lapels of his fine blue suit jacket and pulled his face into the cradle of her bosom.
His ardent lips suckled at her skin, and his mouth sought her nipples. She felt a flash of his teeth on one of her sensitive, pink buds, not enough to hurt, but enough to send a fire-laden jolt through the core of her sex. His hands molded her generous flesh, touching, gripping, tugging. Elemiel moaned and reached out for support, leaving handprints along the glass cases that lined their trysting spot.
“I want you,” she wheezed, “I want you in me now.”
Asper looked up at her with those quartz-chip eyes of his, and smiled. “I thought I was supposed to be- what were the words you used? ‘Melted like hot wax.'”
“Hilarious. You can melt like hot wax inside my pussy once you’ve fucked me properly.”
The knight tisked, his hands not leaving the flesh of her breasts. “Elemiel, you have such a dirty mouth on you.”
The elf rolled her eyes. “You already knew I had a dirty mouth. I showed that to you back in the fitting room. Now give me your cock.”
Asper’s chuckle was cruel. “No.”
“What? Oh, come on. If this is about the candle thing-”
“This is about payback for the fitting room. Now lean back, elven temptress, and try not to fall over.”
At first the dark-haired elf had no idea what Asper meant, but she quickly learned. He knelt in front of her in the gemstone-encrusted alcove, and ran his sword-calloused hands up her legs, from calf to thigh. As his hands slid across her skin he pushed up the black crepeworm hem of her dress.
An eyebrow rose when he saw the shorn blossom of her cunt. The lips of her vulva were swollen with desire, and a line of her honey had dripped from them, clinging to the slope of her inner thigh.
“I never wear underwear if I can help it,” she said, deliberately misreading the subject of his delight. Yes, obviously I’m aroused. I’m a very horny elf, alright? Now just put me out of my misery and Stick. It. In..
But Asper did not Stick It In. He leaned forward and kissed the line of her pussy-drool, then lapped at it with his tongue. The knight followed the glistening trail up her leg until his mouth hovered above her cunt, his breath hot and humid against her sex.
The sight of him down there was thrilling, and the tension of having him so close but still not touching her built an expectation inside of her that was almost unbearable. He looked up at her from his place between her legs.
The knight was completely focused on her; on Elemiel’s body, her sex, her face. She was the center of his attention, and although that was something she was rather used to, there was something different about this. It was as if she were a sweet spring bubbling in the middle of a sunlit glade, and Asper was very, very thirsty.
“Take the damn ring off,” she demanded. “I want to look at your face. Your real face.”
His grin was far too self-satisfied for Elemiel’s liking, but Asper slid the band from his finger. Immediately the glamor fell, and she was looking at the maddening knight who had somehow managed to so thoroughly capture her attention and imagination.
The glowstone lights illuminating the jewelry cases passed through small pillars of rainbow tourmaline in one display, their colors stacked like jelly-cakes. The glow broke as it passed through the precious stone, fracturing into a kaleidoscope of light across Asper’s face, his tongue, and the desire-swollen lips of her vulva.
She moaned, and he chuckled, but it seemed his cruelty only went so far. Asper leaned in, breathed deeply of her provocative, powerful scent. He kissed her lower lips almost coyly, pressing the flat of his tongue against them and dragging it first up, then down. He closed his eyes as if to savor the taste of her essence, his tongue lapping at her slowly, content for now to sample the flavor of her pussy and not slip between its folds.
“Delicious,” he proclaimed. “You taste as good as you look, Elemiel, and you look as good as you smell. Vanilla and cream and sex.”
“Shut up,” she replied. “There are far better uses for that tongue- OH!”
He shut up, and returned his mouth to her nethers. His hands snaked around her to grip at the flesh of her ass, his fingers digging into her skin as he pulled her vulva more firmly onto his lips. He licked in long, luxurious strokes, travelling the length and breadth of her cunt, exploring, tasting, and murmuring appreciatively as he did so.
Standing there pressed against the wall in the alcove, surrounded by shining jewels, Elemiel felt deliciously, wonderfully vulnerable. There was an utter nakedness to the act, and the elf felt as if she were being watched by a whole room full of people, instead of just one infuriatingly handsome knight. His tongue stroked molten, liquid pleasure between her legs, and his eyes roved her body with grey-flecked intensity. She was being smelled, tasted, observed so intimately and thoroughly that she felt laid bare and open.
Elemiel’s hands cradled Asper’s head, and her fingers wove into the soft tumble of his brown hair. Her abdomen tightened and she gasped as he slowly, with tortuous leisure, slid his index finger into her. He pinched the bottom of her cunt gently between that finger and his thumb, all while pressing his gums against the swollen pearl of her clit with a steady, mind-melting pressure.
His kiss was patient, and his fingers were deft. Asper stimulated her perineum from the inside with his finger, and from the outside with his thumb. He relaxed the steady pressure on her clit occasionally to lavish attention on the lips of her pussy with his tongue, rubbing slowly, steadily, building and building the sweet, magma-hot pressure inside of her until she had no choice but to burst.
“Asper! Fuck, I’m coming! Augh!”
Elemiel deliquesced all over the knight’s mouth and fingers, her ardor gushing in a river of honey down his chin and his wrist. He smiled, eager to drink her, and Elemiel felt the long series of contractions work their way through her body as the orgasm spent itself in her flesh.
The elf gasped, her nipples as hard as the necklace of diamond chips on display to her left, and her chest flushed with vigor. She made to pull him to his feet, intending to sample the taste of herself on his lips, but Asper resisted.
“We’re not done yet, you wicked creature.”
“Huh- oh, shiiit,” Elemiel hissed. He had moved his index finger inside of her, curling it in a beckoning gesture so that he stroked the special spot inside of her. His middle finger joined it, sliding inside of her well-lubricated cunt with ease, and they worked together within her, making filthy wet noises.
“It’s sensitive, hold on, wait-” she begged, but Asper was keen on his payback. He sucked the bud of her clit and fingered her until the elf felt like she was seeing stars. Just the reflection of those diamonds on the ceiling, she realized, trying to cling to some coherent thought.
Whereas Asper’s cunt-kisses had been patient and perhaps coy before, they were now ravenous, and Elemiel was only too happy to meet him in his hunger. She threw one leg over his shoulder and ground her cunt against his face, squeezing her vagina around his questing fingers, working her hips to fuck his mouth and grunting all the while like some tamed beast.
While Asper pressed her into the wall and ate her pussy as if it were his last meal, she felt a blush spread up her chest and up her neck. It worked its way to the tips of her pointed ears, and the elf bit her lip to keep from crying out.
Elemiel’s face felt hot; gods, everything felt hot. The room was spinning and nothing was real; nothing except the feeling of Asper’s tongue on her cunt and his fingers deep inside of her body, exploring, rubbing, finding that special spot, there, right there oh gods-
“Hnnnngggh!” she stifled a scream by biting her knuckles, her body coiling and relaxing as a staccato drumblast of sweet, agonizing pleasure ripped her very soul in half. She melted on his fingers, gushing all over his lips and tongue and the stubble of his strong chin. The honey of her lust ran down his knuckles and dripped on the finely polished floor. She was making a mess, and she gave not a single whit for it.
At long last, Elemiel’s eyelashes stopped fluttering and she came to her senses. She looked down to see a very pleased looking Asper gazing at her with… what? Adoration? Amusement? A mixture of both?
“You seemed to enjoy that,” he observed drily, and given the soaking she’d given his chin and lips, the observation seemed to be the only dry thing about the man right then.
“I h-hardly felt it,” she stammered. “You’ll need to try again.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of a crash followed by the delicate noise of tinkling glass interrupted him. Asper and Elemiel shared a look, frozen into inaction for a heartbeat.
But only a heartbeat.
“Shit!” the elven woman said, hurrying to fix her dress. “Ditherington’s plot!” Her legs felt like jelly, but the fire of adventure joined that of carnal desire inside of her soul. She took off out of the alcove, thighs rubbing wetly together.
Asper wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ran to catch up with her. Elemiel quickly scanned the Hall of Gemstones, but didn’t see anyone, nor any signs of broken glass or mayhem.
“They must be in the Hall of Ancient Wonders,” she hissed, pointing at the door at the end of the long room. “Keep quiet.”
Elemiel and her knight crept to the door and peered through. This particular chamber was filled with artifacts from the ancient Age of Wonders, a nearly mythical time filled with gods and demons and mysteries both terrible and magnificent.
They spotted their quarry down at the far end of the hall. Ditherington, with his golden hair and permanent sneer, was unmistakable, as was the short, round, and insouciant form of the gnome fixer, Sharky Houndstooths.
The two men, along with a pair of lackeys, were crowded around a table. Broken glass littered the floor, and although it wasn’t clear exactly what they were up to, it obviously wasn’t anything good.
“What are they doing?” murmured Asper. The knight’s hand strayed to his side as if in search of a sword that wasn’t there. When his fingers closed upon only air, he grimaced.
Elemiel couldn’t see what they were all gathered around looking at, but her keen elven eyes could read the lettering on the informational placard near the table.
“Ancient medical implements from the Age of Wonder,” she read aloud. “What on earth could they want with that?”
“No idea. Let’s get closer and find out.”
Elemiel and Asper padded forward, careful to keep out of view by using the various plinths, tables, and displays set about the room. They crept by ancient weapons, moldering books, and jewelry half-rusted away by the long aeons which had passed since the Age of Wonder.
The two of them crouched behind a table filled with a wide variety of what appeared to be ceremonial knives, some in better shape than others. Elemiel peeked around the corner, staring at the duke and his people intently.
One of the disreputable-looking lackeys Sharky had presumably hired for this caper dragged over a chair, and Ditherington sat. Sharky walked over and the two men spoke together in low, hushed tones. Elemiel caught the words, “Are you sure?” and saw the Duke’s blonde head bob in a nod.
Sharky gestured to a lackey, who lifted something from the table, brushing aside the smashed glass from the object.
“Are those… forceps?” Asper asked, sounding confused.
Indeed, the black-clad lackey was holding what appeared to be a pair of medical forceps. They were heavy and expensive-looking, the metal plated in gold and the handles carved from gleaming ivory.
Elemiel watched in mounting horror as Sharky produced something from his pocket. It was a tooth, silver and gleaming with a pale glow as if suffused with bottled moonlight.
“That’s it,” said Asper, drawing in a sharp breath. “That’s got to be what he pulled from the tomb, in the wilds past the Godswall.”
“Are you certain?” Elemiel asked.
“Yes. Can’t you feel it?”
Indeed, Elemiel had to admit there was something disturbing about the tooth. It was long and sharply pointed, a canine belonging to what kind of creature Elemiel did not know. The elf stared at it, disquieted, as Duke Ditherington opened his mouth and leaned back in the chair.
“Hold him,” said Sharky, who accepted the forceps from the lackey. The gnome climbed into Ditherington’s lap while the two henchmen held the duke in place.
“I wish I could say this won’t hurt,” said Sharky, sounding very much as if that wasn’t something he wished at all, “but I think it probably will.”
“What in the name of Solana’s creamy, well-fucked cunt lips is going on here?” Elemiel hissed.
Asper looked at her like she had suddenly grown three heads.
“What?” she said crossly. “I thought I had already proved I had a dirty mouth, didn’t I?”
The duke let out a thin, reedy scream as Sharky did something with the forceps in his mouth. There was a wrenching motion, and the gnome pulled out a bloody shard of white enamel. Sharky tossed it aside and placed the silver tooth into the clasp of the strange forceps, then put them in Ditherington’s mouth again. Even crouched behind the dagger-table, Elemiel was able to hear the click as the odd tooth slotted into place, filling the freshly vacated gap in the duke’s mouth.
“All done,” Sharky said, clambering off Ditherington’s lap. “Now comes the hard part. Let’s get out of here.”
“Damn,” hissed Elemiel, turning her head to speak to Asper. “We’re outnumbered two to one. Maybe we can call the museum guards and- Asper you fool man, what are you doing?”
With the threat of his quarry escaping, Asper stood up. He snatched a curved dagger from the display table and brandished it threateningly.
“Not so fast, Nigel,” he said, stepping around the table to face the duke.
Ditherington leaned against the chair for support, blood dripping from his lips. His eyes went wide when he caught sight of Asper.
“DeNallare!” he exclaimed, shock making his eyes wide. “You’re alive? Impossible!”
“Good to see you too, Nigel. We have so much to talk about. For example, what did you just put inside your mouth?”
“Shit,” Elemiel swore under her breath. She’d forgotten that Asper had taken off the glamor ring, and Ditherington had clearly recognized him.
Well, no point in deception anymore, she thought. The jig was up.
Elemiel rose and snagged a dagger from the table, then went to stand by Asper. The knife felt good in her hand. It had been a while since she’d held a blade, but it was said that you could take the girl out of the adventure, but you couldn’t take the adventurer out of the girl.
“Elemiel!” It was Sharky’s turn to be shocked. The wretched little gnome grinned at her in pleased disbelief.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, but I can’t say I mind a bit. Gods, when was the last time we spoke to each other? Oh that’s right. You were singing for your supper at an inn on the way to Twinbridge. Fortunes have changed for both of us since then, eh?”
Sharky gestured to his finely tailored black suit, and gave her a lascivious wink. He’d always been a lecherous little asshole, who enjoyed the sound of his voice far too much.
“You’re looking less tattered than usual,” she said evenly.
Sharky grinned. “I recently came into a spot of good fortune. The good duke here is awfully generous with his friends.”
“How nice for you,” she said. “But instead of a suit, I think you should’ve used that money to buy a personality.”
The shit-eating grin fled from Sharky’s face. He scowled.
“Still the same mouthy cow that I remember. I hoped you might’ve learned some manners, but you knife-ears are all the same. Prancing around, thinking you’re better than everyone else.”
“Oh, not everyone else. Just some people.” The line of her lips pressed into a nasty smile.
“Right, that’s quite enough,” said Ditherington, recovering from his earlier surprise. “We’ve gotten what we came for; the mindwrack worm tooth is mine, and the next phase of the plan can begin. Sharky, will you please kill these people for me?”
“Seems a shame,” Sharky said, clearly enjoying the way that Elemiel’s dress clung to her curves, “but you’re the boss. Lasra, cut the lights.”
One of the henchmen, a thin woman dressed in black, stepped forward and raised her hands. A thick, unnatural darkness descended upon the room, choking out the light so that even Elemiel’s keen elven eyesight couldn’t penetrate it.
Instinct took over, and Elemiel was moving. She dove to one side while Asper shouted, “Shadow mage!”
Yes, obviously, thank you for that, she thought as she rolled. The elf hoped Asper wasn’t foolish enough to keep shouting and give away his position in the thick, tenebrous darkness.
There was a ripping noise, and Elemiel stifled a curse as she felt her dress suddenly hanging looser. Something had torn, and damn it, she’d liked that dress. Air caressed the skin of her left breast, and she guessed that one of the straps had been snapped by her sudden movement.
She heard the sounds of a scuffle, and guessed Asper had engaged one of Sharky’s lackeys. It was impossible to see in the pitch blackness, but Elemiel was an elf, after all. It wasn’t just her eyesight that was keen.
Elemiel concentrated on the sounds in the room. She heard a set of rapidly receding footsteps that she assumed was Nigel Ditherington, and the grunts and heavy impact of Asper’s fight. Sharky was more difficult; as a gnome, his tread was lighter, far more subtle than a human’s clumsy footfalls. But still, she thought she might…
There.
Elemiel whipped out a hand. The dagger left her fingers and sailed through the darkness. There was a pained yowl, and suddenly the shadow spell lifted. Tendrils of black melted away, and the glowstone light of the room returned to reveal that her dagger had managed to find its target.
Well, a target, Elemiel corrected.
It seemed that she was a little out of practice, since the blade was currently protruding from the thigh of the female shadowmancer, and not Sharky Houndstooth as she’d intended. Still, it hadn’t been a bad throw.
As the shadowmancer screamed and fell to her knees, Asper finished with his opponent, and for the first time, Elemiel got to see the Sunstriker in action. He fought with a grim, ruthless efficiency. Asper jabbed his fingers into the other lackey’s throat, and then pulled the man’s face into his knee. The black-clad man crumpled, and Asper turned his gaze to Sharky.
The gnome took a look at his incapacitated peons, and swallowed. “Right,” he said, slowly inching towards the back of the room where Ditherington had fled. “I’ll just be going now.”
He reached into a pouch and tossed something on the floor. It exploded with a terrific bang and a cloud of acrid smoke. When Elemiel’s vision cleared, the foul little gnome had vanished, abandoning his two groaning henchmen to their fates.
“Damn it!” Asper swore. He made as if to follow, then paused when he saw the elf. “You’re, ah, spilling out a little there, Elemiel,” he said delicately, nodding to her dress.
The elf sighed, tugging at the broken strap with resignation. “Yet another garment that isn’t up to the task of containing my charms.”
“Urgh,” gurgled the man that Asper had chopped in the throat.
“Auuugh,” whined the shadowmancer, piteously cradling her dagger-struck thigh.
“Halt! Stay right there!” someone shouted.
Elemiel turned to see the burly minotaur mage from the reception hall leading a cohort of uniformed museum guards through the doors to the room. His nostrils flared angrily, and the gold-shod tips of his horns did nothing to conceal their wicked sharpness. He didn’t look very happy to see the two of them.
The guards quickly sealed off the exits and began to take stock of the damage. The mage clomped over to Elemiel and Asper, who were corralled by a loose circle of museum security while they waited for the City Watch to arrive.
“What in the name of Bullroarer is going on here?” the minotaur demanded. His eyes narrowed when he saw Asper. “Hey, aren’t you the one with the melted cock?”
Elemiel giggled, and the minotaur turned to face her. “And you! I hope you have a good explanation for all this. You stand accused of… of…”
Elemiel let the broken strap of her dress fall, and the minotaur trailed off.
“My eyes are up there,” she purred, and it was Asper’s turn to snigger.
“Perhaps a few days in an Iron Ward cell will help curtail your sense of humor,” the minotaur said with a glower, eyeing Asper ferociously.
The knight spread his arms and adopted an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to antagonize you. Look, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Let’s start with introductions; my name is Asper DeNallare.”
The minotaur blinked his bovine eyes several times as the name sank in. “Aren’t you dead?” he said.
Asper’s grin widened. “Evidently not.”
Cat’s out of the bag
It took a few hours, but eventually the constables let them go with a minimum of fuss. Sharky and Ditherington were long gone by then. The City Watch found an old sewer access point in the museum’s basement, which the men had presumably used to escape. It seemed appropriate.
Sharky was always a gutter rat.
The two captured henchmen, for their part, weren’t talking, but not because of some sort of misplaced loyalty. They literally had nothing to say as their tongues had been cleaved to the roofs of their mouths by some sort of Thieves Guild geas. The constables said they wouldn’t have access to a spellbreaker to deal with that until at least the next morning.
The lead detective from the City Watch had recognized Asper immediately upon her arrival. After several rounds of questions she waved both Elemiel and the knight away, once she’d secured Asper’s promise to report to the palace the next day. It seemed that the knight would be expected to explain himself and his absence to his aunt, something which Asper did not look overjoyed about.
Talina smirked at the two of them when they returned to the carriage.
“I told you not to make a mess,” she began in elven, but Elemiel put up her hand.
“It’s no use,” she said with a sigh. “He speaks elvish.” She jerked her thumb at Asper.
Talina’s dark eyes bugged. “This whole time?” she asked, scandalized.
The elf and the knight climbed into the privacy of the carriage. Elemiel was still positively bursting with questions, such as what in the nine hells a mindwrack worm was. The museum curator who had attended the scene to evaluate the break-in had told them that the forceps Sharky used on Ditherington to insert the tooth were meant for performing magical transplants, although Elemiel could’ve guessed that for herself.
As for the duke himself, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to implicate the man. No one had seen him enter or exit the party, but Elemiel hoped that Asper could put that clever tongue of his to work tomorrow and convince his Aunt that the man was up to no good. There was still a plot afoot, and Elemiel could smell the adventure in the brisk night air.
“Take me back to my room, if you don’t mind,” asked Asper when they were comfortably seated.
Elemiel’s violet stare was incredulous. “Really? Back to that dump? The jig is up- by this time tomorrow night, the entire city will know that the famous Sunstroker-” his mouth twisted, and she rolled her eyes, “alright, Sunstriker– is alive and well. Why not just go back to the Emerald Palace?”
Asper gave her a pained grimace. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid my aunt as long as possible. Explaining what I’ve been up to is not going to be a pleasant task.”
That was fair. Queen Annabelle was known for being a reasonable, evenhanded monarch, but even someone as level headed as the Queen was probably going to be a little upset that her own cousin had faked his own death without telling her.
“Fine,” Elemiel said magnanimously, “but I’m not having Talina drive through north Tin Town at this hour to bring you back to that flea-infested hovel. No. You’re coming home with me.”
Asper’s eyes glittered storm-grey in the shadows of the carriage. “Can’t get enough of me, eh?”
“Do shut up,” Elemiel said. With a single, elegant movement, she shrugged out of the tattered remains of her dress. It slid down her body, pooling at her waist.
“Right now?” Asper asked, his voracious, lovely eyes fixed hopefully upon her generous bust. Elemiel’s skin seemed to glow in the moonlight streaming through the coach’s window.
“Don’t worry,” said the elf, and her smile was wide filled with mischief. “Talina can be very discreet.”
Elemiel straddled the knight, then thumped the roof of the carriage. Talina cracked the reins, and they sped off into the wet night.
To be continued…